Among the first of those who came to Kentucky to face the fierce savage and the stern ordeal of pioneer life, there were not lacking ministers of the gospel-some of them, perhaps, impelled by the same fierce desire to improve their condition in life by taking up land, as were their lay brothers whom they accompanied. Daniel Boone's brother, Squire Boone, whose story has hitherto been told, was a Baptist preacher, but as there were no other white men in Kentucky at that time than himself and his brother, it is not probable that he indulged in much preaching to a congregation of one. He and his brother found themselves so busily engaged in looking after their temporal safety that there was little time left for spiritual affairs. To the late Rev. J. H. Spencer's "History of Kentucky Baptists" the author is indebted in large part for the following statements in connection with the Baptist church, in the early history of the state.

The first Baptist preacher known to have been in Kentucky, except Squire Boone who came before any settlement was made, was Thomas Tinsley. Beyond the fact that he Beyond the fact that he was in Harrod's Station and was regularly preaching there on Sundays in the spring of 1776, but little is known of him. William

Hickman, who visited the station at this time and who afterwards became an eminent preacher among the early Baptists of Kentucky, in a narrative of “Life and Travels,” says: "We got to Harrodsburg the first day of April. (Year not stated). Myself, Thomas Tinsley and my old friend, Mr. Morton, took our lodgings at John Gordon's, four miles from town. Mr. Tinsley was a good old preacher, Mr. Morton a good pious Presbyterian, and love and friendship abounded among us. We went nearly every Sunday to town to hear Mr. Tinsley preach, I generally concluded his meetings. One Sunday morning he laid his Bible on my knee and said to me, 'You must preach today,' saying that if I did not, he would not. I knew he would not draw back. I took the Book and my text and spoke perhaps for fifteen or twenty minutes, a good deal scared, thinking that if I left down any gaps he would put them up.

He followed me with a good discourse, but never mentioned any blunders." How delightfully sincere and simple-minded these good men of that early day were is plainly shown in the above extract, and in those few words is found about all that is known of Thomas Tinsley, the first Baptist minister who ever preached in Kentucky, or,

as far as is known, in any part of the great west. At what time he came to Kentucky or whence he came is not known.

Much interest has been felt and much inquiry made as to which is the oldest church in Kentucky and what was the date of its constitution. In 1825 Rev. Spencer Clack, an accomplished scholar and at that date a member of Simpson's Creek church in Nelson county, now the Bloomfield church, was clerk of the Salem Baptist Association, which body, fearing that its minutes would be lost if not put in more permanent form, made the following order: "The clerk is requested to make out a condensed history of the association and present it at our next meeting." Mr. Clack prepared the report, from which the following is taken: "On Saturday, October 29, 1785, four regular Baptist churches met at Cox's creek, Nelson county, by their delegates, in order to form an association,

and after a suitable sermon on the occasion preached by Rev. Joseph Burnett, proceeded to business, Joseph Burnett being moderator and Andrew Paul, clerk. Letters from four churches were read: Severn's Valley, constituted June 18, 1781, no pastor; Cedar Creek, constituted July, 1781, Joseph Burnett, pastor, number of members not stated; Bear Grass, constituted January, 1784, nineteen members, John Whiteacre pastor; Cox's Creek, constituted April 17, 1785, with twenty-six members, name of pastor, if any, not given."

The late Samuel Haycraft of Hardin county, a born historian, a member of the Severn Valley church and a contemporary of several of those who entered into its constitution, published a history of the church in 1857 in the Christian Repository in which he states that it was constituted June 18, 1781, as above stated, under a green sugar tree about a half mile from the present limits of Elizabethtown. Among the original members were Joseph Vanmeter and his wife Letty, their son Ben

ham and Hannah, his wife, and three colored persons, Mark, Bambo and Dinah, servants of Joseph Vanmeter. How strange this will appear to those persons who, in other days, imagined that colored people in the southern states were reckoned along with horses, mules and cattle by their owners.

Among the early members of this church. were many distinguished citizens of whom may be named John LaRue, in honor of whom the county of LaRue was named; Robert Hodgen from whom the county seat of LaRue, Hodgenville, received its name; General Duff Green, afterwards of Washington City, and Thomas Helm, grandfather of Governor John L. Helm, and great-grandmother of Hon. George H. Yeaman and Rev. W. Pope Yeaman, and other distinguished citizens. "Of the descendants of the original members of the old church," says Mr. Haycraft, "many able ministers have gone forth to declare to the multitudes the blessed message that gladdened the hearts of their ancestors amid the toils and dangers of the savage-infested wilderness."

Mr. Haycraft, a grandson of the Jacob Vanmeter above mentioned, further writes of these early churches. "There are facts and circumstances connected with the early history. of the church with which the present generation is little acquainted. When this present widespread and favored country was a wilderness; when not a human habitation was to be found between Louisville, then called the Falls of the Ohio, and Green River, save a few families who had ventured into Severn's Valley, a dense, unexplored forest, and commenced a rude settlement far from the haunts of civilized man, there the lamented John Garrard, a minister of God, came like John the Baptist, 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness,' and finding a few of the disciples of the Lord, like sheep without a shepherd, they were collected together into what was afterwards known as Severn's Valley church.

It has ever borne the same name, none having dared and it is hoped never may, to lay impious hands upon it by changing its venerable name."

Collins states that the first Baptist church was organized in 1781, known as Gilbert's Creek Church at Craigs Station, a few miles east of the present site of Lancaster in Garrard county, but does not give the month and day as does Mr. Haycraft in his sketch of Severn's Valley church; so that is impossible at this date, one hundred and thirty years later, to say which is correct.

Of this early period Smith says in the "History of Kentucky." "After the close of the American Revolution, a flood of Baptists poured into Kentucky, chiefly from Virginia, and churches began to spring up everywhere in the wilderness. It was still a time of great peril. Before houses of worship were erected, the worshipers would assemble in the forest, each man with his gun and sentinels would be placed to guard against surprise from the Indians, while the minister, with a log or a stump for his pulpit and the heavens for a sounding board, would dispense the word of life and salvation." And they dispensed it with no sparing hand, tradition stating that some of their sermons occupied nearly two hours in their delivery. The author, in his boyhood days, at a country church has known the services to begin at eleven and continue until one o'clock or later; and he had to sit in the church and appear to listen, or later take what was sure to come to him. Those of today in the city churches, who object to a sermon more than twenty-five minutes in length, have no idea what they have missed by not having been born and reared in the country much more than half a century ago.

"In 1790 there were three Baptist Associations in Kentucky, forty-two churches and 1,311 members. In the population of 7,500, in round numbers, there was about one Baptist to twenty-three persons. To minister to

the spiritual needs of the people there were forty-two ordained ministers and twenty-one licentiates.. licentiates. . . . This venerable church soon stretched its arms all through eastern Kentucky and exerted a wide influence for good from Kentucky river to Cumberland Gap.

.. The history of this church has been imperfectly written but its influence is engraven upon hundreds of prominent names in the Baptist denomination in Kentucky. Three important stations in the neighborhood of Boonesborough were founded by its members, and but few events occurred affecting the welfare of the state, south of the Kentucky river, in which they did not participate.”

The Methodist Episcopal church, with that missionary spirit which has characterized it from the days of Wesley to the present, turned its eyes early to the Kentucky field and, in 1786, of the five new circuits added. to what might be termed its General Conference, Kentucky was one of these and thus six years before the district became a state, the Methodist itinerants were in the forest wilds on their holy mission. The first two of these who came in 1786 were James Haw and Benjamin Ogden. The first named of these remained for five years, afterwards going to Tennessee, where he subsequently withdrew from the Methodist and joined the Presbyterian church, in which he continued preaching until the time of his death years afterwards. Benjamin Ogden preached for a time in Kentucky after his coming in 1786, but was later transferred to the Cumberland circuit in middle Tennessee. He died at Princeton, Kentucky, in 1834, having been for nearly fifty years a minister. These two, Haw and Ogden, were the first Methodist ministers sent to Kentucky by a conference, but they were not the first Methodist ministers to come to the then western frontier.

"In 1784," says Smith, "a local preacher by the name of Tucker, while on his way with his kindred and companions, descending the

Ohio in a boat to Kentucky, was attacked by Indians. Mortally wounded, by his bravery and presence of mind, he rescued the boat and his comrades, among whom were the women and children and then fell on his knees and died, shouting praises to God. But as early as 1783, Rev. Francis Clark, accompanied by John Durham, a class leader and others of his neighbors with their families, left Virginia and settled in Mercer county. He organized the first class in the far west about six miles from Danville and appointed John Durham as its leader. Clark stands preeminent as the founder of Methodism in Kentucky."

The first annual conference of the Methodist church in Kentucky assembled at Masterson's Station near Lexington, May 15, 1790, and was presided over by Bishop Asbury. Accompanying him were Richard Whatcoat, who was afterwards to become a bishop, Hope Hull and John Leawell. Asbury, the first bishop who had ventured into the western wilds, was guarded throughout his journey from Virginia, by a volunteer company composed of the Rev. Peter Massie, John Clark and eight others. On the tenth day after leaving Virginia the party reached Lexington in safety, though much worn by the hardships of the journey across mountains and streams and through the pathless forest. Bishop Asbury afterwards said of this journey: "I was strangely outdone for want of sleep. Our way was over mountains, steep hills, deep rivers and muddy creeks, a thick growth of weeds for miles together and no inhabitants but wild beasts and savage men. I slept about an hour the first night and about two the last. We ate no regular meals, our bread grew short and I was much spent." He relates that on the way he saw the graves of twenty-four persons in one camp, who but a few nights previously had been murdered by the Indians. To those who know of the thousands of Methodists found today in the

state, it will seem strange to know that the conference over which Bishop Asbury, at risk of his life, had come to preside, was composed of but six persons: Peter Massie, James Haw, Wilson Lee, Francis Poythress, Barnabas McHenry and Stephen Brooks. There was preaching at noon and night, some were converted and others who had wandered from the fold were restored to fellowship. Three elders were ordained, plans for a school to be called Bethel were arranged, and three hundred pounds in money and land subscribed for its founding.

Bishop Asbury, whose name is revered to this day, was born in England; was early converted, began holding meetings at seventeen years of age and at eighteen was preaching. He was sent by Mr. Wesley to America when he was but twenty-six, and at Baltimore, in 1784, was unanimously chosen a bishop.

In 1783, there came to Kentucky Rev. David Rice, the founder of Presbyterianism in the west. He was an earnest Christian man, well fitted for the arduous duties of a pioneer. Zealous in the cause of the church and its twin, the cause of education, he at once became a popular member of the small community with which he had cast his lot. Public-spirited as a citizen the people sent him as a delegate to the convention which met at Danville in 1792. His course in the convention which framed the first Constitution of Kentucky, was marked by his earnest efforts to bring about the abolition of slavery, in which he was unsuccessful. What might have been the result had he succeeded! Perhaps Virginia would have followed in the footsteps of her first-born, and after her others of the southern states, until the curse of slavery would finally have been lifted from the land and the horrors of internecine war avoided. Mr. Rice was an earnest, dignified, good man and did more than any other to bring the Presbyterian church into prominence in the state. His great labors ceased

only when he had reached the advanced age of eighty-three years, dying in July, 1816. He was followed by other earnest, good men, who kept alive the fires which he had lighted.

In 1786, the Presbytery of Transylvania, which recalls Colonel Henderson's futile efforts to found a state under that name, met at Danville-the first Presbytery ever assembled in the district of Kentucky, there being twelve Presbyteries represented and five ministers present. These latter were Reverends Rice, Rankin, McClure, Crawford and Templin.

The question of who first held religious services in Kentucky is yet a mooted one, nor does its solution particularly affect the then religious status of the frontier, but the journal of Col. Richard Henderson dated Sunday, May 25, 1775, notes the following: "Divine service, for the first time in Kentucky, was performed by the Rev. John Lythe of the Church of England." It is supposed that Colonel Henderson meant on the date of the entry in his journal. This is fairly conclusive evidence as to the date of the first service, and whether it be correct or not, it is to the credit of the early settlers that, in the midst of almost daily alarms and incursions of the savages, they could and did find time for worship. Colonel Henderson further says of a great elm tree at Boonesborough: "This divine tree, or rather one of the many proofs of the existence from all eternity of its Divine Author, is to be our church and council chamber. Having many things on our hands, we have not had time to erect seats and a pulpit but hope by Sunday sennight, to perform divine service in a public manner, and that to a set of scoundrels who scarcely believe in God or fear a devil, if we are to judge from the looks, words or actions of most of them." Those who have formed opinions unfavorable to Colonel Henderson by reason of his efforts to establish the new state of Transylvania, may be led to

revise them on learning that he was what might be termed a "blue-stocking" Presbyterian. That he had no exalted opinion of many of those whom he met at Boonesborough is evident from the vigorous quotation from his journal, above given. That he was possessed of an intimate acquaintance with the strength of English language cannot be doubted-a characteristic still inherent in his amiable and excellent descendants yet to be found in Kentucky.

It does not appear that Mr. Lythe remained long in Kentucky; perhaps the vigorous description of some of the people at Boonesborough, as given by Colonel Henderson, may have been an impelling reason for his early departure.

The first settlers in Kentucky, coming for the most part from Virginia, were either Baptists or members of the Episcopal church with, of course, some from other churches and perhaps, a large number from no church. Marshall says in his history of the state: "There were in the country, and chiefly from Virginia, many Episcopalians, but these had formed no church, there being no parson or minister to take charge of such. This very relaxed state of that society may have been occasioned by the War of the Revolution, which cut off the source of clerical supply, derived then mainly from Great Britain. There remained, even in Virginia, a real deficiency of preachers. Education is, with this fraternity, a necessary qualification for administering both the affairs of church and